cjbarber/toolsofthetrade

★ 17,038Audience · pm founderComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((toolsofthetrade))
    What it does
      Curated tool directory
      Startup resource guide
    Business tools
      Payments and billing
      Marketing and SEO
      Analytics and CRM
    Tech tools
      Databases and storage
      DevSecOps
      Hosting and APIs
    How to use
      Browse by category
      Compare pricing

mindmap root((toolsofthetrade)) What it does Curated tool directory Startup resource guide Business tools Payments and billing Marketing and SEO Analytics and CRM Tech tools Databases and storage DevSecOps Hosting and APIs How to use Browse by category Compare pricing

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Browse a curated table of payment and billing services to pick one for your startup without open-ended web searching.

USE CASE 2

Find hosted tools for marketing, analytics, or HR organized by category with pricing notes already included.

USE CASE 3

Discover DevSecOps and hosting options when setting up a new project infrastructure.

USE CASE 4

Use as a jumping-off list when evaluating tools for customer support, CRM, or developer productivity.

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

License information is not mentioned in the repository description.

In plain English

Tools of the Trade is a long, community-maintained directory of online services and software that startups and developers commonly use day-to-day. The repository contains no application code, the README itself is the product, organized as a giant table of contents with categories and tables of named services. The description calls it Tools of the Trade, from Hacker News. The background section explains the origin: in 2010 the founder of Delicious asked on Hacker News which hosted services people were using instead of self-hosting things like mail and source control. A 2013 follow-up thread revisited the same question, and this repository began by collecting answers from those threads, plus data from AngelList and Quora, then grew further from pull requests on GitHub. It includes both self-hosted and hosted services. The contents are grouped into two top-level buckets, Business and Tech. Business covers payments and billing, marketing and SEO, productivity tools, founder needs like fundraising and legal documents, analytics dashboards, design and UX, CRM, customer support, HR, and shipping. Tech covers databases and storage, programming productivity, APIs, testing and monitoring, platform services, DevSecOps including security and continuous integration, hosting and boilerplates, and other categories like DNS, error handling, geocoding, and backups. Each leaf category is a small table listing the service name, Twitter handle, a pricing line, and a one-line description. You would use this as a starting point when picking a tool for a specific job and want a curated jumping-off list rather than open-ended web search. The full README is longer than what was provided.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

I am building a SaaS startup and need to pick an email marketing service. Based on the Tools of the Trade directory, list the available options with pricing tiers.

Prompt 2

I need a hosted database for my MVP. What database and storage services does the Tools of the Trade list recommend, and what are their free-tier limits?

Prompt 3

I want to add analytics to my app. Which analytics tools from the Tools of the Trade directory are free or have a free tier?

Prompt 4

I am looking for a customer support tool for a small team. Summarize the customer support options listed in the Tools of the Trade directory with pricing.

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